The Cruel Sea (1951) Read online

  It was something which Ferraby did not forget . . . When he told Lockhart about it he was pitifully distressed.

  ‘I don’t mind so much having it turned down,’ he said. ‘But to talk like that about it . . . It’s—it’s beastly!’

  Lockhart shook his head. ‘You might have guessed it. He’s that sort of man.’

  ‘I hate him!’

  Lockhart tried to steer him away from the emotional aspect. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I don’t believe it’s even necessary for you to get permission for this sort of thing. They can’t possibly stop your wife coming up here. Ask the Captain about it.’

  ‘But even if she were here, Bennett could stop me going to Glasgow to see her.’

  ‘Not on your days off duty.’

  ‘I bet he could.’

  Lockhart nodded. ‘Yes, I bet he could too. He’d find some way, especially if you asked the Captain after being refused permission.’ He smiled at Ferraby across the wardroom table. ‘Better forget it, as that bastard said. There’ll be other chances later.’

  When the duty petty officer appeared in the wardroom doorway, cap in hand, to say that Compass Rose was ‘ready for Rounds’, Lockhart, who was Officer-of-the-Day, stood up, and followed him out of the wardroom and up the ladder towards the fo’c’sle, and the last job of his 24-hour turn of duty. Evening Rounds were part of the daily routine which, established stage by stage, was already changing Compass Rose from a shipyard item into a working ship-of-war.

  In establishing this routine, Petty Officer Tallow, as coxswain, had had a great deal to do: more, indeed, than he would normally have needed to take on with a First Lieutenant who knew his job properly. But, seeing that the First Lieutenant was Bennett, there were a number of gaps which someone else had to fill if the ship were to function properly: unobtrusively, by a hint here and there or by direct action, Tallow saw that they were accounted for.

  The Officer-of-the-Day’s Rounds every evening, a short tour through the mess decks and along the upper decks to check the mooring wires and see that the ship was properly darkened, marked the end of a daily programme which covered every phase of the ship’s life in harbour. The hands fell in at 6.30 every morning, and washed down the upper deck – a cold job in winter, with daylight barely established: Colours were hoisted at eight, then there was breakfast, and then the day’s work proper began – mostly, at this stage, cleaning, and stowing stores. At 10.30 Stand-Easy and Up-Spirits – the issue of a tot of rum to every man on board. After that, work continued until four, when liberty men went ashore and the duty watch settled down to their evening on board. Letters came down to the wardroom for censoring soon after dinner: Rounds were at nine o’clock, and Pipe Down at ten. The men who had all-night leave could stay ashore till 6.30 next morning.

  The coxswain’s particular responsibility, the ship’s canteen, where duty-free cigarettes and tobacco were on sale, had already been established: Tallow ran it from his own minute cabin aft, being practically crowded through the porthole in the process. His other special duty, the rounding up of defaulters, was also under way, beginning with an odd breach of decorum which caused Ferraby, who happened to be Officer-of-the-Day, a good deal of embarrassment. He was routed out of the wardroom at nine o’clock one evening, after noises from the upper deck had warned him that one of the returning liberty men was making a considerable disturbance. At the top of the ladder he found Petty Officer Tallow, and by his side a sullen-looking stoker swaying slightly on his feet.

  ‘Stoker Grey, sir,’ began Tallow grimly: and then, to the culprit: ‘Tenshun! Off caps! Stoker Grey, sir. Urinating on the upper deck.’

  ‘What!’ exclaimed Ferraby, genuinely shocked.

  ‘Urinating on the upper deck, sir,’ repeated Tallow. ‘Just came back on board. The quartermaster reported him.’

  Ferraby swallowed. He was inclined to be out of his depth, and it was his first defaulter as well.

  ‘What have you got to say?’ he asked after a moment.

  Stoker Grey swayed forward, and back again, and muttered something.

  ‘Speak up!’ barked Tallow.

  Grey tried again. ‘Must have had a few drinks, sir.’

  ‘It’s absolutely disgusting,’ said Ferraby. ‘I never heard of—’

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ muttered Grey.

  ‘Keep silence!’ said Tallow.

  ‘It’s disgusting,’ repeated Ferraby weakly. ‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself. First Lieutenant’s report, coxswain.’

  ‘First Lieutenant’s report,’ echoed Tallow. ‘On caps! About turn! Quick march.’

  The man shambled off. Presently a heavy thud resounded along the iron deck.

  ‘Better keep an eye on him,’ said Ferraby.

  ‘I’ll do that, sir,’ said Tallow bleakly.

  ‘I hope there won’t be too much of this sort of thing.’

  ‘You know what beer is, sir.’

  ‘But still—’ began Ferraby. Then he left it at that. War, it was clear, was not for the squeamish.

  Two days before Christmas, the Captain went up to Glasgow for a final visit to headquarters: he returned with a fresh sheaf of papers which he studied for some time in his cabin. Then he went down to the wardroom, where the others were assembled.

  ‘Sailing orders,’ he said briefly as he sat down. ‘We go downriver the day after tomorrow – and in case you’ve forgotten, the date will be December the twenty-fifth.’

  ‘A nice present,’ said Lockhart in the pause that followed.

  ‘I hope so . . . Here’s the rough programme, anyway.’ He consulted a sheet of paper in his hand. ‘We’ll be towed down to the oiling berth, about five miles downriver. We’ll oil there, and then steam the rest of the way down to Greenock. There we stay at anchor for about a fortnight, taking on stores and ammunition, and adjusting compasses. Then we go out on our full-power trials, probably down to Ailsa Craig and back: we’ll test the guns and the depth-charge gear on the way. That takes us to—’ he looked at the programme again ‘—to January 12th. Then if everything’s all right, we go north to Ardnacraish for our working-up exercises.’

  ‘How long will they take, sir?’ asked Bennett.

  ‘The programme says three weeks. It won’t be less, and if we don’t put up a good show they can keep us there as long as they like. So it’s up to us.’

  ‘Do you hear that, subs?’ interjected Bennett unnecessarily. ‘We don’t want any mistakes from either of you.’

  Ericson frowned slightly. ‘We don’t want any mistakes from anyone, whether it’s me or a second-class stoker.’ It was the first time the Captain had been heard to correct anything Bennett said: momentarily Lockhart found himself wondering if it had happened before, in private, and whether the Captain was actually as blind to the situation in the wardroom, and elsewhere, as he seemed to be. If he really had a critical eye on Bennett, then there was hope for the future . . . ‘Well, there it is,’ Ericson continued: ‘we have to be ready to move in forty-eight hours from now.’ He raised his voice, and called: ‘Pantry!’

  Leading-Steward Carslake, who had been listening attentively outside, waited a decent interval before appearing in the doorway: ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘Gin, please – and whatever anyone else wants.’ And later, over the second round of drinks, he said: ‘I think we’d better have a wardroom party tomorrow night. We may not get another chance for some time.’

  7

  At ten o’clock on Christmas morning, waiting on the cold windswept fo’c’sle for steam to come to the windlass, Lockhart was conscious of a slight headache. He had drunk more than usual at the previous night’s party: it would scarcely have been tolerable otherwise. Mrs Ericson had presided, and done it rather well; but the rest of the company had been comparative strangers to one another – some officers off another corvette, a couple of dockyard officials, a friend of the Captain’s from Naval Headquarters; and Bennett, coming in at about ten o’clock with a bedraggled-looking woman clearly picked up in the ne
arest hotel, had struck an unfortunate note. The sense of well-being, and the accompanying slight haze, induced by a dozen pink gins, had come as an essential relief; but Lockhart felt he was paying for it now. A biting wind, varied with an occasional drift of snow, was no cure for a hangover.

  In the apportioning of jobs and stations on board, the fo’c’sle had been allotted to him as the senior sub-lieutenant, together with the two most interesting assignments – gunnery, and chart correcting. Ferraby, with the second choice of everything, was put in charge aft: he was responsible for the depth-charges, and in harbour he would have to deal with correspondence, the crew’s pay, and the wardroom accounts as well. Certainly, thought Lockhart, he himself had come off best: it couldn’t be helped, but it was bad luck on Ferraby having all the finicking little oddments while everyone else had the glamour. Stamping up and down the fo’c’sle, wishing that his job (of which he had only the vaguest outline) were not so directly under the eye of the bridge, he found himself wondering once again how Ferraby – shy, inexperienced, defenceless – was going to meet the trials that lay in the future. He could be helped to a certain extent, but in the last analysis it depended on his own resources, and they were patently meagre.

  The leading-stoker in charge of the windlass turned a valve, and there was a heartening hiss of steam followed by a clanking noise. ‘Ready, sir,’ he called out.

  ‘Right.’ Lockhart walked to the bows and, trying to disguise the fact that it was largely a process of trial and error, set to work on the task of casting off the spare mooring wires and reeling them in. From the tug alongside, a man with a large red reassuring face watched him: ready, he felt, to correct any mistakes and deal with any crisis. He might well be needed.

  When ‘Hands to stations for leaving harbour’ was piped, Ferraby walked disconsolately aft to the quarterdeck, prepared to execute as best he could an order he barely understood. ‘Single up to the stern wire,’ Bennett had said, and left it at that – though not forgetting to add, by way of farewell: ‘And if you get a wire round the screw, Christ help you!’ To ‘single-up’ presumably meant to cast off all their mooring-lines except the last one needed to hold them to the quay; but only a process of elimination would tell him which one was the stern wire, and he hardly felt equal to the effort of concentration.

  He felt, in fact, confused and wretched. All that he had read about the Navy, all that he had learned at the training establishment, all the eagerness which had driven him to enlist on the day war broke out – all these were being destroyed or poisoned by his present circumstances. He had been immensely proud of getting a commission: he had been ready to accept without question, as an unbreakable bond, the whole of the rigid discipline and the tradition of service which he had read or learnt about: but there had been no one like Bennett in the textbooks, and Bennett, it seemed, was the reality behind the fine phrases . . . He had known perfectly well, also, that he would be miserable as soon as he was separated from his wife: that was another thing he had been prepared to endure with a good heart; but the ache of separation was a high price – almost an impossible price – to pay for submitting to the present oafish tyranny. If the Navy were really Bennett, and Bennett’s manners and methods, then he had been cheated and betrayed from the beginning.

  He had slipped out of last night’s party to telephone his wife in London. Waiting in the draughty dock office for the call to come through, the eagerness of anticipation had almost choked him; but as soon as he heard her voice, with its soft hesitant inflection, the eagerness had ebbed away and he was conscious only of the miles between them and the weeks and months that might still keep them apart. This moment was their goodbye: there was nothing else in prospect. And it was for this that he was treated like a backward child or ordered about like a convict . . .

  But for her sake, and for his own, he had done his best.

  ‘Hallo,’ he started. ‘Hallo, darling! Can you hear me?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Oh, how wonderful! Where are you?’

  ‘Same place. I wanted to wish you a happy Christmas.’

  ‘And to you . . . What are you doing?’

  ‘Having a party.’

  ‘Oh . . .’

  ‘Not a very good one. A horrid one, really. I wish I could be with you. Are you taking care of yourself?’

  ‘Yes, darling. Are you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you in the ship?’

  ‘No. In the dock office. What are you wearing?’

  ‘The striped housecoat . . . Oh darling, I wish you were here. Is there any chance?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I’m afraid not.’

  ‘Can’t I come up, then?’

  ‘It’s too late.’

  ‘Why? What’s happening?’

  ‘I . . .’ Some phrase about careless talk pricked him, and he hesitated. ‘I can’t really tell you.’

  ‘Is the ship ready?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh . . .’

  The wires hummed between them. They were not doing well. He said again: ‘This is just to wish you a happy Christmas,’ and then suddenly he could not endure it any more and he said: ‘I must go, I’m afraid . . . Goodbye . . . Take care of yourself,’ and rang off. He had stood in the dock office, utterly defeated, for at least five minutes before he could bear to go back to the ship; and once on board he had slipped into his cabin, without a word to anyone, and lain down on his bunk, and felt the successive waves of wretchedness flood in, with nothing to check them and no hope to drive them out.

  Now, on this queer Christmas morning, Ferraby stepped on to the quarterdeck repeating ‘Single up to the stern wire’ as if it were some pagan incantation. The six hands of the after-party, under their leading-hand – Leading-Seaman Tonbridge – were fallen in by the depth-charge rails, waiting for his orders.

  As he came up, Leading-Seaman Tonbridge saluted and said: ‘Take off the breast rope, sir?’

  ‘Just a minute.’ Ferraby looked at the moorings. There were four separate ropes – two leading aft, one leading forward, and one, a short one, going out at right angles to the ship’s side. He hesitated, while Tonbridge, a tough, self-reliant young man who knew it all by heart, adjusted the thick leather gauntlets which all the mooring parties wore. Then Ferraby had a sudden idea – a purely Bennett-idea which he was almost ashamed to use. He nodded to Tonbridge, and said, simply: ‘Single up to the stern wire.’

  Tonbridge said: ‘Aye, aye, sir,’ and then, to the nearest seamen: ‘Take off those wrappings,’ and then, to the hands waiting on the jetty: ‘Cast off breast rope and spring.’ Men moved: the wires splashed in the water, and were hauled in: the moorings quickly simplified themselves, to one single rope running aft. It was as easy as that.

  With a sudden surprised flicker of confidence, Ferraby turned to the voice-pipe that led to the bridge. His ring was answered by the signalman. He said: ‘Singled up aft. Tell the First Lieutenant.’

  He felt humbly pleased with himself. He had cheated, but now, as far as moorings were concerned, he knew the right answer and he need not cheat again.

  Down in the Captain’s cabin, Watts, the Chief Engine room Artificer, was reporting to the Captain about the engines under his charge. There could be no mistaking Watts, or the job he was busy on – his white overalls were stained and splashed with grease, and his hands incredibly grimy. After working most of the night on a refractory valve, he was tired, and his face grey and lined.

  ‘She’s ready to move, sir,’ he said, without much enthusiasm. ‘As ready as I can make her, that is, with twenty dockyard mateys climbing all over her. I’ve had her turning over at ten revs for the past hour. She’s a little rough yet, but it’ll settle itself.’

  ‘What about the steering engine?’ asked Ericson. Earlier, there had been trouble over this, and they had been waiting for replacements.

  ‘Seems all right now, sir.’ Watts scratched his bald head, leaving a smear of grease like a painted quiff on his forehead. ‘The
re’s a lot of loose stuff in the steering compartment – wires and dry provisions and such – it’ll have to be secured when we’re properly at sea. But I’ve tried the engine out a dozen times, hard a-port to hard a-starboard, and she’s smooth as you could wish. And if we want to steer by hand, it’s simple enough – too simple, mebbe.’ He sniffed. He had no very high opinion of the machinery in his charge, which had few refinements of any sort and was scarcely more complicated than the stationary steam engine, run on methylated spirits, which had been his first real toy. Corvettes, it was clear, were going to be turned out simply and economically, like pins or plastic ashtrays: as such, they hardly deserved a Chief E.R.A. to look after them.

  ‘All right. Chief,’ said Ericson. ‘We’ll leave it at that. You know the programme: we’ll be towed down to the oiler and then steam the rest of the way. I’ve allowed two hours for oiling: the tide’s flooding all the afternoon so there’s no hurry.’

  ‘Two hours should do us, sir. What about the revs, then?’

  ‘That’s something we can only settle finally when we’ve been running for some time.’ Ericson looked at one of the many slips of paper on his desk. ‘I see the builders’ recommendations are: Slow Ahead, 35 revs: Half Ahead, 100 revs. We’d better try that, to start with. If it’s too fast, or too slow, I’ll give you the alterations on the voice-pipe.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’ Watts, preparing to leave, summoned the vague and rare outlines of a smile. ‘Funny sort of Christmas morning,’ he commented. ‘Makes you think a bit.’

  ‘It won’t be the last, Chief.’

  ‘D’you think it’ll be as long as the other war, sir?’

  ‘Longer, probably.’ Ericson stretched out his hand, and rang the bell to the bridge. ‘That’s what we’ve got to be ready for, anyway.’

  Watts, leaving the cabin, shook his head in doubt. His favourite Sunday paper had said that the war would be over in a year, and, on this Christmas morning, he wanted very much to believe it.